It had been a week later and Harry was getting anxious wanting to know where Matt and Sirius were with their plan for getting Sirius his due trial. He'd asked Matt a few times already but Matt always said that things were being done. All this waiting along with wondering what the first task of the blasted tournament was going to bring, Harry was becoming increasingly nervous. So when the Hogsmead weekend came it was welcomed by him with open arms as he really wanted to get out of the castle. This year felt suffocating.

Joining Neville they decided to walk the distance to the village rather than taking a carriage as he wanted to enjoy the day as much as he could. Neville had been an awesome company and while Harry didn't really enjoy his company as much as he enjoyed Ron and Hermione's he didn't complain. Neville had been completely honest with him. Besides his parents knew Harry's and they were very close friends back in the day.

On their way to Hogsmead they were overtaken by a carriage which Harry saw had Daphne, Astoria and Tracey. Astoria looked at him and wanted to wave but then remembered and didn't. Harry wondered whether Tracey still noticed Astoria's excitement as their carriage disappeared in the distance.

"I know it's difficult to keep such a thing a secret," Neville said knowing about Harry's secret of living with the Greengrasses.

"Thanks for understanding, Nev," Harry said. "You don't know how much relief it is to share this with someone. I don't know if I'd have been able to live with such a secret all by myself. I would've probably but then again if someone knew it could endanger the two."

"You really care about them, don't you?" Neville asked with a small smile.

"I have to," Harry said. "Matt and Anna have done so much for me already! I don't know what I would've done if they hadn't come to my rescue after I came to know that Ron's mom was stealing from me. And now I think that I can't even trust Dumbledore completely. After everything that Matt and Anna have done and are still doing for me the least I can do is not to spill this secret of ours that will put their daughters in danger."

Neville said nothing as he just nodded as they continued their walk. "This is nice," he said a minute later. "You were right about taking a walk to the village."

"It feels suffocating this year at Hogwarts," Harry said. "Even though I stupidly took a wizard's oath in front of everyone trying to prove that I didn't put my name in the goblet it feels as if people still don't trust me."

"They don't," Neville said having Harry's full attention. "It's not just how you feel. No one believes you. Some do but not everyone. Those who don't, they never liked you to begin with and just want you to suffer one way or other. I think there are only a handful of us in Gryffindor who actually believe that you didn't put your name in the goblet nor had someone else do it while about ninety-five percent of Gryffindor still thinks that you somehow had yourself entered the tournament."

Harry couldn't believe that. So much for housemates being families! But he didn't care either. They could all go to hell. They came fluttering around whenever something good happened to him but distanced themselves whenever he was in a problem. He'd been noticing it since the beginning but wondered that things will probably get better but they didn't. Even on the slightest of opportunities everyone started to blame him. So in a second Harry decided to not give an ounce of thought about them in the slightest. He would just be him and wouldn't care about what others thought about him.

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"There!" Tracey found an empty table in the corner as Daphne and Astoria followed her through the crowd of students. "I'll get the orders," she said leaving Daphne and Astoria to go to the counter. Like every other Hogsmead weekend the Three Broomsticks was jam packed with students all the way. They were the main source of income for the residents of this small village as it was so far from any other settlement.

Applying a privacy charm around their table Daphne sighed in relief in its silence as she couldn't bear the crowd's noise anymore when her eyes caught something from the corner. She might've mistaken it but she definitely saw Ron putting away a small vial in his hand. He was with Hermione who was looking around. Daphne saw as Ron pushed Hermione a glass of butterbeer.

Starting this term Daphne had noticed Hermione's change in behavior. The two had never talked to each other except for when they were partnered during potions' classes, which happened a lot as the two were so good at it. She was quite sure that Professor Snape kept their brewed potions in his potions' pantry as they were good enough to be used.

However, since the start of this term she had noticed Hermione's lack of focus. Seeing her academic rival slip down in her grades was something that had somewhat bothered the ice princess but she had never put much thought behind it. She had always shoved it aside thinking it was probably because what had happened between Ron and Harry as it was Hermione who kept their friendship together…from what Daphne had heard.

But then knowing Hermione academically Daphne knew no matter the issue Hermione was not someone who would let her grades be affected by it. While Daphne didn't really bother herself with things like such but after seeing Ron's suspicious move she couldn't help but be curious. There was clearly something that Ron had mixed in Hermione's drink and Daphne needed to know what it was. She didn't know why but she wanted to help her academic rival who was also Harry's former best friend. Harry had mentioned to her how Hermione was blindly taking Ron's side this year. Daphne had noticed it too. There was clearly something going on that she wasn't able to keep a finger on.

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"Harry, do you have a minute?" Harry stopped and turned around to see it was Cedric. Harry also saw Fleur and Viktor standing in the distance looking their way and realized it had something to do with the tournament.

Neville didn't need to be told as he excused himself even before Harry could say anything as Cedric asked him to follow him. Harry saw as Cedric, Fleur and Viktor walked over to a less crowded area under a tree before Viktor cast a privacy charm around them as Harry wondered what was going on.

"It's dragons," Cedric said.

"What?" Harry asked confused. "What's going on?"

"We know what our first challenge is going to be," Fleur said.

"Did they say it already?" Harry asked. "I thought they wouldn't until on the day of the tournament."

"Highmaster Karkaroff went to the forest last night on his nightly walk when he saw a clearing deep in there," Viktor said in his thick accent. "He told me that he saw four dragons, each one a different kind and overheard someone talking about how they were going to prepare the first challenge's arena."

Harry looked at the Bulgarian seeker with wide eyes. Was it true? When they said that this tournament was dangerous he had never expected there to be dragons, and that too in the first challenge. What else were they supposed to put the champions through in the remaining two? Did they really want the champions to be alive by the end of the tournament?

"Madame Maxime did her own investigation," Fleur said, "and told me what the challenge is going to be. We each will be facing one of the dragons and our objective will be to obtain a golden egg from them. The egg is what contains the clue for the second task and the points will be given on the basis of who retrieves the egg the fastest."

"If you're doubting us I, too, saw those dragons, well, two of them actually," Cedric said. "I was serving detention last night. Moody had caught me talking in his class so he had sent me to serve detention with Hagrid who had plans for hunting gerbil snails to make fertilizer for his pumpkin crop. I just tagged along when we also came to the clearing and saw the dragons. Well, technically Hagrid took me there because he was so excited to show me those creatures. You know how he is. I didn't know about what the task was going to be until Fleur told us."

"So why tell me all this?" Harry asked.

"Like we said before," Cedric said, "we just want a healthy competition amongst ourselves. We each help one another before the challenges as best as we can because this tournament is no joke. People die here…people have died here."

Harry said nothing to that as the three seniors excused themselves. He watched them go different directions. He still felt that them helping him was somewhat weird. He still couldn't say whether what they'd told him just now was true but he wasn't stupid enough to not completely ignore them. He decided to go to the forbidden forest tonight to see the dragons for himself.

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"You were right. There's nothing in the records," Amy, Amelia's secretary said putting a file on her desk as Amelia looked at her and then the file. She opened it and quickly went through the record and didn't find anything related to Sirius' trial.

About a week ago she'd received an anonymous letter with a copy of the public records of all the trials held in Wizengamot over the last decade. The letter said that Sirius Black had been sentenced to life in Azkaban without a trial and the copy of the records had his name missing.

She'd then tried to spend the next two days figuring out who had sent her the letter but she couldn't. Whoever this was they'd covered their tracks remarkably well but they didn't fail in their objective as Amelia then focused her attention on finding anything related to Sirius' trial.

When word spread that Sirius Black had betrayed the Potters to Voldemort Amelia was among the handful who was hit by the news more than the others. Being close friends with Lily, James, Sirius, Remus, Frank and Alice she wasn't ready to lose two of her closest friends, especially when she'd lost her sister and brother-in-law a few days ago to the hands of the death eaters.

A part of her desperately tried to convince her that Sirius couldn't do something like that. He and James were closer than blood brothers. When she asked the then DMLE head about it she was told that Sirius had been found outside the Potter Cottage laughing hysterically and screaming "it was my fault!".

It was like someone had punched all the air out of her. She never went to his trial which at that time she thought Sirius received. When she heard of the news that he'd been sentenced to life in Azkaban in maximum security a part of her felt relieved but the other half didn't. Somehow she still couldn't bring herself to accept that Sirius would do something like that. She knew him and James were very close friends but she also knew him very well especially because of the few years that they'd been in a relationship. They had plans to get married, have children and grow old together. She'd never imagined that a womanizer like Sirius would fall for her and that she'll fall for him but then Voldemort had happened and everyone had to focus their attention on the war. If they didn't fight they got tortured and killed.

She never went to visit him once in all these years. For her he didn't exist anymore. So when news came that Sirius had broken out of Azkaban last year Amelia was shocked. She didn't know if she could catch him so she'd requested Fudge to take control of the case after manipulating him that if he caught Sirius then his image in the public would only get better.

And now because of an anonymous letter and some private investigation she had found that Sirius never received a trial. No matter what heinous crime one did it was every individual's right to get a fair trial where their crime or innocence was proved. A spark of hope kindled inside her as she thought that Sirius might not have actually betrayed the Potters but living on her principles she couldn't decide on that unless Sirius was given a trial and his innocence was proven…or his crime.

She took out the anonymous letter from her pocket and looked at its bottom. There was an address written there where the sender had asked her to send any questions she had about this case. She'd tried to find who lived at that address but it had turned out to be an abandoned shack. The letter said that she wouldn't find anyone there and that the address was only meant to send letters if she wanted to communicate with the sender.

She hadn't told anyone but her secretary Amy about Sirius' missing trial records so this was all still off the books. If she got caught running an investigation without having any proper records and permissions from the higher ups she would be removed from her position of the DMLE head. Despite knowing that, she wanted to find the truth, the real truth this time.

So she wrote a letter addressed to her anonymous sender asking to meet or have at least a way of verbal communication because she had lots of questions and whoever this mystery person was he or she knew something Amelia didn't.

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Checking one final time that no one was awoke Harry grabbed his wand, cloak and the marauders' map and headed outside the castle and towards the forbidden forest. A few minutes later he was standing at the limit of Hogwarts' school grounds and looked at the tall trees that were the beginning of the forest. Despite being in there a lot Harry hadn't been to the forest much during night times because he wasn't stupid. His first time inside the forest and he'd almost died when Voldemort possessed Quirrell had seen him while feeding on unicorn blood.

After that he'd only been here once more during his second year when he and Ron were figuring things out regarding the opened secret chamber and the last time was when he and Hermione were trying to save Sirius and Buckbeak. That's how many times he'd been to this forest after sunset and now that he stood looking at it alone he felt a little nervous to go inside.

He looked at Hagrid's hut and wondered whether he should ask his half giant friend to accompany him but he knew Hagrid would tell him to go back inside the castle. He was contemplating his decision of coming out here tonight when he thought he saw the night sky above the forest turn yellow for a second.

"Come on, Harry. If you don't figure this out for yourself then who will?" he said to himself before making sure he was properly hidden under his invisibility cloak as he grabbed his wand in the other hand and headed inside the forest.

About twenty minutes of walking he could hear people's screams and shouts along with some roaring noise. He didn't know how he'd gotten here. He was just walking in a straight line while leaving a faint trace of a guiding spell behind him so that he wouldn't get lost on his way back.

A few more minutes later and he found the clearing and the many people he'd heard. The smell of burning flesh didn't go unnoticed by his nose as he covered it trying not to throw all over the forest floor. Inside the safety of his cloak and hiding behind a wide enough tree Harry looked at the clearing and saw two people lying motionless on the ground with their clothes completely burnt along with a good portion of their bodies. Others were running around, some trying to lift the two when the rattling sound of a huge cage grabbed Harry's attention.

"Cover that thing!" someone shouted as a few people ran towards the cage with their wands drawn.

Harry saw a cage made of metal bars as thick as his arm but what was inside made his blood run cold. He'd seen pictures of dragons before in his books but never a dragon like this. It was as black as a moonless night, almost as tall as the basilisk he'd fought in his second year and it was barely held inside the cage which was definitely small for its enormous size. It had scales like pointy horns all over its body with its tail tip shaped like a mace using which it was constantly banging on the metal bars of the cage. Harry didn't know how long that cage could hold it as he could see a few bars already broken while some melted from what he guessed was the dragon's fire breath. He had never seen a dragon like this and wondered what species it was as there were hundreds of dragon species. However, this one looked really dangerous.

As Harry wondered if the people conducting the tournament were out of their minds he saw the two people lying on the floor being floated and moved away. Seeing their limp bodies and open mouths he knew they were dead.

He couldn't help but curse as he flinched when the dragon roared almost deafening him while its fire breath lit the night sky in a yellowish light once more.

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Thanks for reading…